HWS News
28 August 2024 HWS Welcomes Kazim Ali as 2024-25 Trias Writer-in-Residence
Award-winning writer Kazim Ali, who joins the renowned literary residency at Hobart and William Smith, will give a reading of his work on Thursday, Sept. 12.
This year’s Trias Reading Series will kick off with Kazim Ali, the 2024-25 Trias Writer-in-Residence. The reading and Q&A will be held on Thursday, Sept. 12 at 7 p.m. in Bartlett Theatre. The event is free and open to the public.
Ali’s books encompass multiple genres, including the volumes of poetry Inquisition, Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism and is an accomplished translator of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi and Mahmoud Chokrollahi, among others.
Associate Professor and Chair of English and Creative Writing Kathryn Cowles, who serves as this year’s Trias Writers Residency Director, says, “What I love about Ali’s work is its capacity to hold luminous complications together — to look at things that are difficult and multi-faceted from many different angles. He opens hard-shut things up somehow so we can see their insides. He also moves in his books easily between modes of writing — poems that look at how we expect poems to look are followed by poems that look more like lyric essays (or like essays that feel like poems). His writing can move in so many different ways. And he writes fiction and nonfiction (he even wrote a gender-inclusive choose-your-own-adventure novel I read aloud to my daughter) and founded the incredibly influential press Nightboat Books as well. And so, it’s no surprise that he has a reputation for being a terrific teacher who has bright, shining things to say about all different kinds of texts."
Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France and the Middle East. After a career in public policy and organizing, he taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary's College of California and Naropa University. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems titled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light.
Ali previously joined the HWS community as a visiting writer during the Trias Residency of poet Donald Revell. He also served as judge for the Deborah Tall Book Prize and corresponding small-press publishing class.
This fall’s Trias Reading Series will also feature poets Blas Falconer and Rajiv Mohabir. Falconer will join the reading series on Thursday, Oct. 24 at 7 p.m. Mohabir will read on Thursday, Nov. 7 at 7 p.m. Both readings will be held in the Bartlett Theatre.
The Trias Residency for Writers is named after poet Peter J. Trias ’70, author of the collection The House in Venice. His gift to HWS established the Peter J. Trias ’70 Endowed Fund for Poetry and Creative Writing, to help attract poets and writers of distinction to the campus.
